


The Dark

by Nightmarechaser



Category: Original Work
Genre: Extended Metaphors, Fear, Fear of unknown, Gen, Paranoia, and i use it as a metaphor for something, and the thoughts that happen, how am i expected to tag this, i barely know how to describe this without giving it all away, i don't know how to tag, im unsure, it's an extended description of coming home to a dark house, probably trust and relationships, prose, so bare with me here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-11
Updated: 2019-09-11
Packaged: 2020-10-14 19:30:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20606117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nightmarechaser/pseuds/Nightmarechaser
Summary: There's something very human in the fear of the unknown, something very stupid in it.





	The Dark

There is something very terrifying about the unknown. I think we’re predisposed to think that, a leftover from when we lived in caves and the unknown was a sound outside that could have been the wind or could have been something about to eat us. There’s something very human about that. There’s something very stupid about that.

We’ve all experienced it. We’ve all come home after a long day at work, and all the lights are off (or at least they are if you didn’t want your electricity bill to go up) so the house is pitch black. If you closed the door behind you, you wouldn’t be able to see your hand in front of your face. 

So you just don’t close the door.

I don’t know why, it’s your house. You’ve lived in it everyday for years at this point and you know where everything is. (Unless you’ve just moved, in which case, remember wherever you moved from.) You know how your entryway is laid out, you know where the couch is, you know the kitchen is to your left and dead ahead of you is the hallway and down the hallway is your bedroom. You could walk through it with your eyes closed, hell, you have, when you were drying your hair with a towel as you walked from the bathroom to the bedroom to get dressed.

But you don’t close the door.

Maybe it’s the dark. Maybe you felt safe enough prancing around with that towel over your eyes because you knew that if you moved the towel then you would still be able to see. The lights were still on, the sun was shining through the curtains, the only thing blocking your sight was the towel.

The dark, though, the dark doesn’t care whether your eyes are wide open or blindfolded. You still won’t be able to see. And you’re standing there, in the doorway, and you’re looking into your house, and the light from the streetlights doesn’t stretch that far. It fades out, and it doesn’t reach past the hallway corner, and you can just barely see the outline of the couch in the dim.

You could just step forward. It’s your house, you can see the couch, you can see where the hallway is, you can even see the lightswitch across the room. (It’s in such an awkward spot, you don’t know what the builders were thinking.) They’re not going to move if you step inside and shut the door. You’re letting out the heat, the cold is blowing against your back.

You still rummage through your pocket to get your phone out. You’re planning to use it as a flashlight, just press the on button and let it’s little light guide you to the switch across the room. You try to do just that, but nothing happens. Right, you forgot it died earlier today, when you were listening to music to try to make work go by quicker. You try to press the button one more time, like that’s gonna change anything, and sigh. You’re getting cold, and you want to get to bed sometime tonight, so you finally step inside and pull the door closed behind you. 

Pitch black.

It’s nights like these that make you wish you had lighter curtains in the front room instead of the heavy ones your mother convinced you to buy. At least then you’d have the light from the streetlights trickling in and you wouldn’t have this whole door dilemma. As it stands, you can’t see a thing. You keep a hand on the doorknob for a long moment and close your eyes.

Why do you do that? It’s not like it changes anything. You see nothing with your eyes open and you see nothing with them closed. Is it the illusion of choice? Does it make it feel like it’s just the towel over your head, like when you open your eyes, the lights will be on and everything will be alright? 

Are you hiding? Does it make you feel safe to blind yourself to your own blindness? Like if you can’t see the monster, then it doesn’t exist, but this time the monster really doesn’t exist, it’s just dark. 

Why does the dark feel like a monster, like something to hide from?

Maybe it’s because you don’t know what’s in it. That fear of the unknown. It’s stupid, really. You’re standing here, hand on the doorknob, eyes closed in a perfectly dark room, and there’s an irrational uneasiness creeping up your spine that makes you hesitate to let go. The lightswitch is right across the room, you just have to walk in a straight line and you’ll get to it, and then all this worry and thought over the dark and fear of the unknown and monsters-

Oh yeah, monsters. Those exist. Except for how they don’t. You know they don’t, you’re not a child anymore. There’s no monsters under your bed or in your closet, and you haven’t needed a nightlight in years. (Though maybe you should get one, if the dark is giving you this much trouble.) But for some reason, some stupid, primal reason, standing in your perfectly safe house tonight, holding onto your doorknob, eyes closed in the dark, you can picture it.

A serial killer, hiding just around the corner. That creature from that horror movie your friends dragged you to last week, hiding in your bedroom from where it crawled in your window, ready to pounce. It could even be right in front of you, right in the center of the room, watching you stand like an idiot in front of your front door because the dark is making all these paranoid ideas come flying out of some back corner of your brain like a half-rate necromancer raising spirits to scare the stupid teens in the graveyard with a ouija board.

You just had the door open, you know there’s nothing there, you saw it. There isn’t even anything on the ground for you to stub your toe on, you cleaned the place yesterday and haven’t had time to make it into a pigsty again. There’s a perfectly clear route from the door to the lightswitch, you just have to walk it.

You take another breath, then you open your eyes, let go of the doorknob, and carefully step forward. You move your foot in front of you slowly, feeling it out, making sure there isn’t anything to trip on, and you keep your hands out in front of you so you don’t bump into anything. There isn’t anything to bump into or trip over, you saw that when you had the door open, but you still act like there’s going to be. 

And why did you open your eyes? It didn’t make a difference, you still can't see anything. A minute ago it made you feel safe to have them closed, but you opened them when you stepped forward. Now you won’t close them, and you’re looking into the dark like you’re suddenly going to gain the ability to see where you’re going. Why?

Are you keeping your eyes on the danger? We don’t much like walking into danger unaware, once again heading back to that fear of the unknown. If we know danger is coming, we want to keep our eyes on it. If you have to step your foot into a bear trap, you at least want to watch it happen, to know when it’s coming, not have it be by surprise.

And there it goes again, comparing the dark to a beartrap. Why is that comparison so easy to make? You know there’s nothing there, you saw that there was nothing there when you had the door open, but you can’t see it anymore. You know it’s safe, yet letting go of the doorknob and stepping further into the dark still feels like coming unmoored in a storm, like stepping into a cage with a beast.

That’s what your front room has become, a cage with you and a beast inside. There is no beast, you know there isn’t, but you can’t see it. The dark has covered your eyes and filled the room, so by all your eyes know, there could be a beast in the room with you. Maybe it’s prowling around you, stalking you silently as you inch across the floor, amused by how helpless you are in the dark- And your hand hits the wall.

It feels like finding your anchor, like the storm just stopped completely the second you had something solid to hold onto, to base your position off of. You fumble a bit, fondling the wall until you find the switch. You turn back to the room on some instinct and flip the lights on to see…

...Your house.

Of course you do. There was nothing there, and you knew that. The kitchen is now to your right, the hallway is behind you, and your couch is right over there where you expected it to be. The path between you and your front door is perfectly clear, like you saw when you had the door open. There’s no monsters hiding or stalking or prowling, because monsters don’t exist and you knew that.

You sigh, rubbing a hand over your face as your heartbeat slows back down. It’s been a long night, you don’t know why you got so scared. (You’re not going to let your friends drag you to the next horror flick.) You have a late dinner and then you use the light from the front room to find your way down the hallway and turn on your bedroom lamp, then you turn right around and turn off the front light. You don’t need to be leaving it on all night, your bill would go through the roof. You get ready for bed and tuck yourself in before reaching over and pulling on your lamp cord, and then you go to sleep. 

And you don’t worry about the dark, or about monsters, because you’re in your bed, under your blankets, and everything is okay. It’s still the same dark, but it doesn’t bother you now, for whatever reason. Maybe because you think of your bed as a safe space, who knows. No need to bother worrying about it, because you’ve already fallen fast asleep.

I’ll sit here and wonder in your place, though.

The fear of the unknown, it’s such a human thing. Irrational and powerful, a part of the human experience, one that’s intrinsic and important, one that made us move from jumping at the wind in caves to coming home to safe houses with street lights outside. It’s such a human thing, and humans can be just so stupid sometimes.

We find unknown in the known and let it terrify us, and I don’t understand why. It’s like the second the lights go out, we forget what we just saw and let all our demons come out to play. Yet, only sometimes. Sometimes, we curl under blankets, under warm and comforting pressure, and our demons are less claws and teeth and more fuzz and hugs. 

I don’t understand it, not really, but it’s human. I suppose that’s all I need.

**Author's Note:**

> hey if you read this far, thank you!  
i always appreciate hearing what you think of it if you wanna drop a comment


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